Does Outdoor Living Space Add Value?
If you were in the market for a new home, would the state of the garden influence the offer you put in for a property? If your answer is yes, then you can be confident that adding outdoor living space could potentially add value to your home. That’s assuming of course, that you measure value in pounds sterling. If you are someone who feels that quality of life is not price dependent, then rest assured that a safe and attractive outdoor living space will add eons of value to your lifestyle.
What Do We Mean By Outdoor Living Space?
It’s a funny old term, isn’t it? “Outdoor Living Space” could mean something akin to a camp site. But for the purposes of this article, it simply means a private place, partially open to the elements, where you can carry out some of your day-to-day or leisure activities. In other words, your garden becomes a useful addition to your home.
There are dozens of ways to use an outdoor living space and of course you can adapt your garden to suit your lifestyle.
- Children’s playroom
- Outdoor kitchen
- Dining area
- Relaxation area
- Meeting place for friends and family
- Outdoor cinema
- Exercise zone
- Workplace
- Peaceful retreat
- Reading room
- Hobbies and pastimes
What Do I Need In My Outdoor Living Space?
Every household is unique in terms of the space they have available and the lifestyle it needs to accommodate. However, when faced with the vast array of garden features and landscaping materials, it can be almost impossible to decide what’s needed in a garden and how to place items in relation to each other.
APL registered garden designers are masters at helping people decide what to include in their outdoor living spaces. It’s well worth investing in a garden design even if you intend to source and install the features yourself.
Start by listing all the activities you want to use your garden for and then think which features will fulfil your needs. Don’t forget practicalities such as storing the wheelie bin and drying the washing.
Next, think about all the things that might prevent you from using your garden to its full potential. Privacy, road noise, safety, poor drainage and high maintenance are common problems that garden designer’s encounter. However, most ‘negatives’ can be solved through clever garden design.
Finally, invite one or more garden designers to tender for the job of designing your outdoor living area. It’s important that you ‘gel’ with your garden designer and that they are qualified for the job. The landscape industry in the UK is as yet unregulated so anyone with a piece of paper and some coloured pencils can style themselves as a garden designer. Protect yourself by hiring a registered APL member. Click here to find out why and learn more about the garden design process.
Do I Need Planning Permission For My Outdoor Living Space?
All outdoor living spaces should comply with local building regulations but not all will need planning permission.
Your garden designer and landscaper should have a thorough understanding of the rules and be able to guide you through the process of applying for all of the necessary permissions.
In general, provided you are not building tall structures close to your neighbour’s boundaries, paving over large proportions of your garden or making big changes to the levels, you probably won’t need planning permission but please check the government planning portal before you start to make any changes to your garden. https://www.planningportal.co.uk
How Much Does Outdoor Living Space Cost?
The cost of your outdoor living space will depend entirely on the size of your garden and the scope of works. It will be different for everyone. At the APL, we advise people to decide on a budget for their project before they contact a garden designer. In that way, the designer will be able to advise on features and materials that will give you the space you want within the budget you have.
Please don’t use TV garden makeover programs as your pricing guide. Many of the episodes are out of date and most of them will have been subsidised by the companies supplying the materials.
Think of your outdoor living space as an investment in your property value and your lifestyle. Just like the fixtures and fittings inside your home, If your garden is well designed and professionally built it will last for years and bring you a lot of satisfaction and joy. Substandard workmanship may de-value your property and worse - could be hazardous.
A Word Of Caution
Having your very own tailor made outdoor living space will doubtless improve your living standards and your wellbeing. But only if it has been well designed and well built using good quality landscaping materials, will it add value to your property. Crumbling garden walls, an uneven patio, dangerous steps or a daft design could actually detract from the value of your home.
If you are planning to put your house on the market in the future and want to add value, try to compromise between your own personal taste and what a potential buyer might appreciate. Purple flagstones and a unicorn mosaic may well bring you joy, but they could make someone think twice about buying your home. It might be better to stick to fairly conventional hard landscaping materials and then use furnishings and soft landscaping to express your personality.
In the first paragraph of this article we asked if a beautiful garden would influence any offer of a purchase price that you would make on a property. And I think that all of us would be prepared to pay extra for a garden that has already been ‘done’. But what if the opposite were true? What if the garden had been ‘done’ to an appalling standard? Wouldn’t that make you reduce your offer or even walk away from the sale? You should bear that in mind when you are planning a garden makeover.
In Conclusion
Here at the APL, the team is confident that well-executed outdoor living space does add value to properties and make a vast improvement to the quality of life of everyone who uses it. However, in order to get a decent return on investment in the long term, there are distinct advantages to having your outdoor living space professionally designed and built…… Just as you would for an extension to the interior of your home.
You can start your garden improvement journey by contacting one of the many, highly skilled garden designers in your area.